Political Quotes

“It is legislation that every State in the Union is calling us about, their Governors and other representatives, to please take care of this. That is what we need to do. Are we doing this to take care of the doctors? Partially, yes, but the other reason we are doing it is we are doing it to preserve Medicare. If we do not do this, there will be more doctors who drop out of taking care of Medicare patients. What does that mean? It also means there will be other people who are reimbursed by insurance companies and other health care providers who base their reimbursement on what Medicare pays. So we have to do this fix. It is not only to take care of the doctors, it is to take care of patients and Americans from one end of this country to the other. Finally, we have a supplemental appropriations bill. I would hope we could pass that before the Fourth of July recess. It is an emergency supplemental. We know it funds the war fighting. No matter how people feel about the money that has gone to pay for this war, costing us in Iraq alone $5,000 every second, I would hope everyone understands we are not going to vote on the war funding in this measure that is before us now. But we have other things we have to vote on or the war funding would not come forward, and that is important issues such as the GI bill of rights and unemployment compensation extension which States are drastically in need of. It does other good things.”